Glass installation by emerging artist Andrew Erdos gets notice at Art Miami

Art from glass is increasingly present at Art Miami (December 1st-4th) with Schantz Galleries, Heller Gallery, and Barry Friedman among those 2011 exhibitors spotlighting silica sculpture. But it was New York-based Claire Oliver Gallery that may have generated the most attention for the material with her art and video installation of the work of up-and-coming glassblower Andrew Erdos, who brandishes a 2007 BFA in glass from Alfred. According to Whitehot and Huffington Post contributor, Noah Becker, Erdos’s video projections of Arizona sunrises onto suspended mirrorized blown-glass objects (as well as the paintings of fellow artist Andy Denzler) helped elevate Claire Oliver’s display as “the best booth in Art Miami.”

Claire Oliver, principal of her eponymous gallery, told the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet that Erdos has completely sold out and several museums, in Oklahoma City and Toledo, for example, are seeking commissions for 2012 shows, though she declined to identify the institutions saying it was too early. Also according to Oliver, Erdos’s large-scale installation at Art Maimi, The Texture of a Ghost, has been sold to a major museum, again not yet able to be identified by Oliver. The gallerist is not surprised by Erdos and his quick rise, “Glass collectors and people who are interested in the medium of glass are looking for the next generation and they haven’t seen it,” she says.

The 26-year-old, Erdos, came to Oliver in a round-about way. After graduating from Alfred University with a B.A. in glass in 2007, he wound up in New York staying with his friend Lee Wells. In attempts to help Erdos get set up, Well’s introduced the young college grad to Oliver. “[Wells] said, there is the young kid sleeping on my couch. He’s 21 years old and he graduated from Alfred and he wants to make art. Can he mop your floors?” Open to supporting a young artist, Oliver hired him to mop floors and clean windows. She also agreed to mentor him, meeting with him for an half hour each week to discuss his work. Last year, Erdos asked for Oliver’s help in putting together a proposal for a proposal to Deitch Projects. He explained his idea—a sculpture encased in a mirror box using one-way glass combined with a video element—to Oliver, who then told him he would need a budget estimate. After doing some equipment research he came back to Oliver with a sum. “I wrote him a check and said, here’s your opportunity,” says Oliver. The first collector to view his finished product bought the work, she added.

Erdos’s work looks like a collision of 1960s psychedelic pop-art and cyberpunk. His animal sculptures sometimes resemble a distorted version of Mickey Mouse, a balloon art parody of the iconic Disney character. The sculpture encased in an infinity box seems can’t help but remind one of Josiah McElheny’s ground-breaking works such as Endless Repeating 20th Century Modernism (2007), but the video projection creates an altogether different effect. The Claire Oliver Gallery’s site has a great video of one of his boxes. Light bounces off of the mirrored surfaces, disorienting the viewer and creating a kaleidoscopic effect. The work he showed in Miami, The Texture of a Ghost, enlarges his original concept to room size and includes 30 sculptures, instead of one. Audience members are offered the opportunity to stand inside the box as Erdos plays a video he shot of the sun rising over ruins in Arizona. In a conversation with the Hot Sheet, Noah Becker, the writer who first commented on Erdos work at Art Miami, described the work as being both spiritual and jarring.

Andrew Erdos. Texture of a Ghost, 2011. Hand blown mirrored glass, video, acrylic mirror. H: 100 x W: 60 x D: 54 inches. Images courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery.

Now back in New York, Erdos will be focusing all his energy on creating work for loan to various museums and galleries. Public collections come first, says Oliver. Will Erdos and his eye-catching work be more than a flash in the Miami Art pan? Oliver thinks he has staying power. “I agree with the curators who think that he’s the next generation. He’s a glass blower that’s embraced the future,” says Oliver.

—Ruth Reader